In the middle of the night I am awakened by a sound. I sit up abruptly in bed. I hear it again. It's music. Wait, it sounds like the ice cream man, in our house. Is this some kind of twisted nightmare? The flipping ice cream man, breaking in to chop ...
I listen to the rain talk to the leaves. She tells a story of love and leaving (isn’t that always the story? Isn’t that always the punchline?) She tells it softly like someone who has recently lost something that cannot be replaced. She closes he...
But gardening is none of that, really. Strip away the gadgets and the techniques, the books and the magazines and the soil test kits, and what you're left with, at the end of the day, is this: a stretch of freshly turned dirt, a handful of seeds scra...
Yes you're getting your tattoo." I threw my arms around Dad's neck. "Thank you!" "Hey," Mom said. "I'm the one who had to persuade him it wasn't turning his little girl into a streetwalker." "I never said that," Dad said. "No?" I said. "Cool. Cause I...
I hate the fact that it obsesses me so much. Who're we gonna end up with? It's a race, and everyone else is on the tracks and I'm at the wrong venue, with the wrong shoes on." "That's rubbish. He's out there, I promise." "How do you know?" " I don't,...
He had tried to explain the way he felt to Danny once, about compulsive behavior and time rushing too fast and the Internet and drugs. Danny had only lifted one of his slender, mobile eyebrows and stared at him in smirking confusion. Danny did not th...
I won,” said Chelsea’s dad, and went to give Chelsea a high-five, but missed, as they were standing too close. “My fault,” he said. “That was my fault.” “Oh,” Chelsea said. And he stepped back a little and tried again, but Chelsea, di...
Bricks could be used to make a billion dollars. It’s easy! All you need to do is fill up a shopping cart full of bricks, park it outside of a grocery store, and wait for the coming hyperinflation. Then, when some soccer mom walks by with a shopping...
He loved her. Jay Heaton, her best friend since childhood was in love with her. He didn't say it but she knew that it was true. And the part that really freaked her out, the part that caught her completely off guard, is that he wasn't alone. Because ...
I was just waiting for you to want me as much as I wanted you.” His words were quiet but carried one hell of an impact. “I knew we were going to be together; it was just a matter of time. I kept hoping that you would figure it out. But for a smar...
The most fearsome monsters of all may inhabit the dark corners of our mind waiting for us to release them through our believes and gullibility. the phenomenon feeds on fear and believe. Sometimes it destroys us altogether other times it leads us upwa...
Why were you running?” Gordon looked confused. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.” Bite me,” I told him. He was so going to get charged with assault. I might even have to put a restraining order on his sorry ass. “Oh, wait a minute, you already...
The store of fairy tales, that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered, holds out the promise of just those creative enchantments, not only for its own characters caught in its own plotlines; it offers magical metamorphoses to the o...
We can each sit and wait to die, from the very day of our births. Those of us who do not do so, choose to ask--and to answer--the two questions that define every conscious creature: What do I want? and What will I do to get it? Which are, finally, on...
It seemed for a moment as if something was there, loitering between the knurled and towering cherry trees, a flash of a presence as stark as the sight of the snow against their bare branches and cracked, piceous bark. Unblinking, I watched the edge o...
I think that’s what we are all meant to do, all we can do, with the gifts we have been given, be they experiences or talents. Those gifts are waiting to be used to touch others’ lives, as we patiently listen for and obediently follow the directio...
While he was waiting, leaning on the counter at a coffee place, he remembered the dream he'd had the night before about Antonio Jones, who had been dead for several years now. As before, he asked himself what Jones could have died of, and the one ans...
My turn?” asks the blond from behind me. “Didn’t you say she deserved a good spanking for her recent misdemeanours Mike?” His voice has taken on a husky, carnal quality since our introduction at the bench, and I suspect there is another hard ...
The cat Horus shot out from under the table and headed for the door, his ears flattened and his tail straight out. There he encountered Abdullah, who had been waiting for us on the verandah and who had, I supposed, been alarmed by Emerson's shouts an...
But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric - not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing foo...
In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. I'v...
